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Tag: Middle East

  • Clashes in Pakistan as police try to arrest former Prime Minister Imran Khan | CNN

    Clashes in Pakistan as police try to arrest former Prime Minister Imran Khan | CNN

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    Islamabad
    CNN
     — 

    Supporters of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan clashed with police seeking to arrest him outside his home on Tuesday, even as the longtime politician told CNN that he was “mentally prepared to spend the night in a cell.”

    “I want a proper warrant of arrest and I want to see that, my lawyers want to see the warrant,” he told CNN. He also said that he believed his arrest was both inevitable and politically motivated, referencing upcoming by-elections in April and the general election in October.

    “It’s a matter of time. I’m convinced they will come in and arrest me, I’m prepared for it,” he said, adding: “I know what the intention is. They want to get me out of the race. They want to get me out of the match so that they can win the elections.”

    Khan faces allegations of illegally purchasing and selling gifts given to him by foreign dignitaries while he was in office, which he has rejected as “biased.”

    On Monday, the Islamabad High Court issued an arrest warrant against Khan over the case to have him presented before the court on March 18.

    “On the order of the court, the person who ran away from the court will be arrested and arrested and produced there,” tweeted Pakistani Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah on Tuesday.

    But Khan’s lawyers have argued he has previously failed to appear in court because he cannot leave his residence in Lahore due to security concerns. He can only make appearances via video link, according to his legal team.

    In his interview with CNN, the former leader warned that attempts to arrest him could lead to a dangerous escalation in political violence in the country, and that he believed Pakistan’s ruling coalition might eventually use “that pretext of violence” to delay the upcoming votes.

    In a statement to CNN, the country’s Information Minister denied any political involvement in the case. “The government has nothing to do with the arrest (of Khan), and the arrest has nothing to do with elections. The police is only complying with the orders of the court,” Marriyum Aurangzeb said.

    “Instead of cooperating with law enforcement officials, Imran Khan is breaking the law, defying court orders and using his party workers as human shields to evade arrest and stoke unrest,” she added.

    Protests have broken out in major cities across Pakistan in support of Khan, who released a video on social media asking his followers to “come out” in support of his movement if he is detained.

    Local media and footage shared by officials from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party showed water cannons and tear gas being used by police against Khan’s supporters.

    Islamabad police tweeted that four police officials have been injured after being hit by stones by supporters of Khan.

    Khan was ousted as Prime Minister in a vote of no confidence in April. He has since led a popular campaign against the current government, accusing it of colluding with the military to remove him from office.

    “[The government], they’re petrified that if I come into power, I will hold them accountable,” he told CNN on Tuesday.

    “They also know that even if I go to jail, we will swing the elections no matter what they do,” he added.

    Khan has only been arrested once in 2007 by then President and military ruler Pervez Musharraf who died earlier this year.

    The current political upheaval comes at a time when Pakistan’s government waits for a delayed bailout from the International Monetary Fund, which will help with the country’s cost of living crisis and ailing economy.

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  • US calls Iran’s claim of a prisoner swap deal a ‘cruel lie’ | CNN Politics

    US calls Iran’s claim of a prisoner swap deal a ‘cruel lie’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Biden administration officials on Sunday sharply denied Iranian claims that a prisoner swap deal had been reached.

    “Statements from Iranian officials that a deal regarding the exchange of prisoners has been reached are another especially cruel lie that only adds to the suffering of their families,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told CNN.

    There are three American citizens currently imprisoned in Iran: Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi, and Morad Tahbaz. All of them have been designated as wrongfully detained by the US.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had claimed earlier that a prisoner exchange agreement had been reached between his country and the US.

    “Regarding the exchange of prisoners between Iran and the United States, we have reached an agreement in recent days and if everything goes well on the American side, then I think we will see the exchange of prisoners soon,” Amir-Abdollahian told state media in an on-camera interview Sunday.

    “We consider this a completely humanitarian case,” he said.

    But the US State Department said such an agreement had not been struck.

    “We are working relentlessly to secure the release of the three wrongfully detained Americans in Iran. We will not stop until they are reunited with their loved ones,” Price said.

    A White House National Security Council spokesperson also said that “claims by Iranian officials that we have reached a deal for the release of the U.S. citizens wrongfully held by Iran are false.”

    “Unfortunately, Iranian officials will not hesitate to make things up, and the latest cruel claim will cause more heartache for the families of Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi, and Morad Tahbaz,” the NSC spokesperson said.

    “We remain committed to securing the freedom of Siamak, Emad, and Morad, but we have nothing to announce at this time,” the spokesperson added.

    The US and other Western countries regularly accuse Tehran of holding dual nationals as political pawns in negotiations with the West.

    Last March, British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released after six years of detention in Iran. Her release came as the UK settled a decades-old £400 million debt owed to Iran — Tehran has denied it was linked to the prisoner release.

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  • The Saudi-Iran détente and its regional implications

    The Saudi-Iran détente and its regional implications

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    On March 10, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced an agreement to restore bilateral relations. That’s good news.

    The deal was conceived out of need and out of desire: The Saudi-Iranian need to end a conflict that has proven costly and toxic to both nations and disastrous to the Middle East, and the Chinese desire to play matchmaker, to fill the strategic void left by the United States and Russia, and to demonstrate its credentials as a trustworthy global partner.

    The fact that the agreement was signed after two years of difficult negotiations holds promise. But do not expect the long archrivals to turn archangels after normalising their diplomatic relations. There remains a great deal of distrust and too many points of friction to tackle and resolve.

    With no love lost, the renewed Saudi-Iranian relationship may turn into a marriage of convenience driven by national interest and shaped by political and economic calculus. Or, it may become a marriage of inconvenience – one that is eroded by divergent ideological and regional agendas.

    Riyadh and Tehran have agreed to reactivate the cooperation and security agreements signed in 1998 and 2001, respectively, but a return to the status quo ante of the 1990s is challenging if not improbable after a dozen years of hostility.

    Indeed, their proxy conflicts have been utterly devastating with their sectarian overtones, undermining the two countries’ security, crippling their economies and tearing their societies apart. The more they interfered the more Yemenis, Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese and Bahrainis suffered.

    That’s why the way forward is not the way back for the two regional powers. In light of the new and complicated regional order – or rather disorder – they helped create, the two nations must chart a new and sustainable path forward that serves their and their neighbours’ national interests.

    This begins with refraining from intervening in each other’s affairs, wasting fortunes on undermining other Middle Eastern societies, and in the process, engaging in a costly arms race to the bottom.

    Like other peoples, Iranians and Saudis would want their leaders to focus their attention on domestic affairs, not foreign bravados, pursuing democratic harmony at home instead of spreading anarchy abroad.

    A new way forward is an opportunity to lower tensions, mitigate the damages, and compensate neighbours for the harm done to them. It is indeed morally incumbent upon the two oil-rich nations to help Syrians, Yemenis and other victims of proxy conflicts rebuild their shattered lives. China and the West should also help.

    Beyond that, I believe it is in everybody’s best interest if the protagonists try a hands-off approach to regional affairs, especially as their regional overreach allowed foreign powers to exploit and aggravate their conflict.

    Indeed, Riyadh and Tehran must now take a common, firm stand on foreign interference, especially Western support for Israel’s colonialism and apartheid – predictably the only country to openly oppose the new Gulf détente, which it is, no doubt, determined to sabotage.

    They must also reject all attempts by global powers to intervene directly or through proxies in the Middle East. That includes China.

    Beijing, which mediated between Riyadh and Tehran and hosted the final celebratory handshake, has emerged as the biggest winner of the new deal. It will gain greater credibility and prestige as a responsible global player, having helped resolve a complicated conflict in a tough region considered part of the US area of influence.

    Moreover, as the sponsor, China will probably want to stay involved in order to see through the reconciliation and normalisation process, which gives it greater access to the oil-rich region it needs to fuel its economy and military in the long run. In other words, unlike other regional mediations that came at a cost to their sponsors, this could prove profitable to China, and at the expense of its global rival, the US.

    The Biden administration has welcomed the de-escalation in the Gulf, which it says could also help put an end to the war in Yemen, but it is unable to hide its anger and disappointment. This is especially so since Beijing succeeded in championing a diplomatic breakthrough in the Middle East after Washington tried to block its mediation between Russia and Ukraine.

    The US’s grinning mouth fails to hide its teeth-grinding, as China undermines US plans to expand the so-called Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia, or to impose a new nuclear deal on Iran through sanctions and regional pressure. Although it is too early to tell, the Chinese-sponsored agreement may well scuttle the American-Israeli scheme of polarising the region in favour of a pro-Israel and anti-Iran bloc.

    But then again, Saudi Arabia is not about to turn its back on the US or switch alliances. It is far too dependent on Washington in military and economic affairs. But like other regional actors, large and small, Riyadh is also going hybrid, merely adding one more relationship to its diplomatic mix, aimed at securing its own interests first and foremost.

    So will Iran, which has already developed relations with Russia and China. It may well add the US to the mix, if or when the latter agrees to lift the sanctions and strike a fair nuclear deal.

    In other words, the Saudi-Iran deal is an indication of a changing region and shifting geopolitics.

    Welcome to the new Middle East, where states are acting more independently of global powers, shaping and balancing relationships and alliances, instead of being shaped by them.

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  • After a tragic shipwreck, no peace for the dead or living | CNN

    After a tragic shipwreck, no peace for the dead or living | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two weeks after a boat packed with migrants sank off the coast of southern Italy, there is still no peace for the living or the dead, and the missing – mostly children – continue to wash up on the beaches.

    The latest – a girl aged five or six – was discovered on Saturday morning, bringing the toll from when the ill-fated boat broke apart on the rocks on February 26 off the village of Cutro to 74. Nearly half were minors.

    The local coroner’s office provided names for many of the dead including Torpekai Amarkhel, a 42-year-old female journalist from Afghanistan, who was killed along with her husband and two of their three children.

    Her other child, a seven-year-old daughter, is among the approximately 30 people still missing, presumed dead, from the tragedy.

    Amarkhel had fled Afghanistan with her family following the clampdown on women, her sister Mida, who had emigrated to Rotterdam, told Unama News radio, a United Nations project Amarkhel was involved in.

    Shahida Raza, who played football and hockey for Pakistan’s national team, was also among the dead. A friend said she was traveling in the hope of securing a better future for her disabled son.

    Initially, those found were given alphanumeric code numbers, rather than names. When first responders found the corpse of 28-year-old Abiden Jafari from Afghanistan, they identified her only as KR16D45 – KR for the nearby city of Crotone, 16 because she was the 16th victim found, D for donna or woman, and 45, her estimated age.

    But after taking her to the morgue, they discovered she was a women’s rights activist who had been threatened by the Taliban, likely causing her to risk her life at sea.

    The body of a six-year-old boy, first identified as KR70M6, was named by his uncle as Hakef Taimoori.

    The uncle had a family photo showing the young boy wearing the same shoes as he had on when he washed up on the beach. His parents and two-year-old brother also died in the disaster. A third brother remains among the missing.

    The dead have also been caught in a struggle between the Italian state and family members.

    The Interior Ministry ordered that all bodies be transferred from Calabria where the caskets have been on display in an auditorium, to the Islamic cemetery of Bologna for burial, in keeping with Italy’s protocol for irregular migrants who die attempting to enter Italy.

    Family members who either survived the wreck or came from other parts of Europe to claim their loved ones’ remains protested with makeshift signs and a sit-in in front of the auditorium on Wednesday.

    After a tense negotiation, the Prefecture of Crotone confirmed to CNN that 25 families, mostly Afghan and Syrian, agreed to have their loved ones buried in Bologna,.

    All those who have not been identified will also be buried in Bologna along with the remains of a Turkish national who has been identified as one of the human traffickers.

    Pieces of wood wash up on a beach, two days after the boat carrying migrants sank off Italy's southern Calabria region.

    Many of those who died will not be returned home to be buried.

    The fate of the rest remains a point of negotiation, but the mayor of Crotone Vincenzo Voce said the Italian state would pay for any repatriations either to countries of origin or to be buried with family members in other parts of Italy.

    The Italian Interior Ministry told CNN it could not comment on what would happen to the victims’ remains, but confirmed that past protocol is not to pay for repatriating anyone who died attempting to enter Italy as an irregular migrant but to make the country of origin pay costs. In the last decade, no repatriations have taken place, the ministry said.

    Of the 82 survivors, three Turkish citizens and one Pakistan citizen have been arrested for human trafficking, and eight people are still hospitalized.

    Most of the survivors were moved this week to a Crotone hotel after human rights advocates led by Italian leftist politician Franco Mari protested the conditions in which they were being kept, which included one shared bathroom for men and another for women near sleeping quarters that included only benches and mattresses on the floor to sleep.

    Mari, who visited the reception center, tweeted that none of the survivors had sheets, towels or pillows. Twelve others were moved to a reception center for unaccompanied minors.

    Against the backdrop of the saga about what to do with both the survivors and the victims, there is a growing firestorm about the rescue itself.

    A surveillance plane for European border control Frontex had identified the ill-fated vessel the day before it sank and had alerted the Italian Coast Guard.

    The Coast Guard said in a statement that the vessel was not identified as a migrant boat, and that, at any rate, it did not seem in distress.

    Heat sensing surveillance images released by the Coast Guard show that only one person was visible on board the ship when they flew over it.

    Survivors recounted to media and human rights groups that they were locked in the hull of the ship and allowed to come up for air at intervals during the four-day journey from Turkey.

    The Crotone public prosecutor’s office confirmed to CNN that it had opened a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the failed rescue after more than 40 human rights associations and NGOs signed a petition to demand all records be made public to determine if anyone failed to provide assistance to the boat in accordance with maritime law.

    On Thursday, the Council of Ministers led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met on the disaster in Cutro and said they would focus on targeting trafficking rings and increasing jail time for human traffickers to 30 years.

    Protests broke out against Italy's government, who have made stopping migrant boats a priority.

    Many of the government cars were pummeled with stuffed animals by protesters in Cutro who held signs that said “not in my name” to protest against blocking migrants and refugees from entering Europe through Italy.

    The ministers also discussed “speeding up the mechanism for applying for asylum” rather than increasing the quota, which stands at accepting 82,700 migrants who qualify for asylum in 2023. So far this year, more than 17,600 people have reached Italy by sea.

    In 2022, 105,131 people entered the country by sea. The process to apply for asylum often takes between three and five years, depending on the country of origin. People who are not from asylum-producing countries, but are economic migrants, are repatriated back to their countries of origin.

    Italian President Sergio Mattarella said the Afghanistan citizens who survived would be prioritized for asylum. It is yet unclear if those who do not qualify will be repatriated to their countries of origin.

    Meloni’s right-leaning government has vowed to clamp down on human traffickers and NGO rescue vessels. But the boats keep coming – hundreds of migrants were rescued this weekend – and signs are that they arriving earlier than ever. This tragedy is unlikely to be the last.

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  • Iran arrests more than 100 people over suspected poisonings of schoolgirls | CNN

    Iran arrests more than 100 people over suspected poisonings of schoolgirls | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Iran has arrested more than 100 people “in connection with” the suspected poisoning of hundreds of schoolgirls across the country, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

    Citing a statement from Iran’s Interior Ministry, IRNA said the people had been “identified, arrested and investigated” in several cities, including the capital Tehran.

    “Initial inquiries show that a number of these people, out of mischief or adventurism and with the aim of shutting down classrooms and influenced by the created psychological atmosphere, have taken measures such as using harmless and smelly substances,” the statement read.

    Iran has seen a wave of suspected poisonings, carried out almost entirely at girls’ schools, in recent months.

    While Iranian politicians have suggested the girls could have been targeted by hardline Islamist groups, activists believe that the poisonings may be linked to the nationwide protests that erupted last September over the death of Mahsa Ami. Many schoolgirls have been active in the protests, removing their mandatory headscarves in classrooms, tearing up pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and calling for his death.

    Medics, parents and teachers have accused the Iranian government of attempting to silence the victims.

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei previously called the suspected poisonings an “unforgivable crime” and called for “severe punishment” for anyone found responsible.

    Among those arrested, the ministry said, were “individuals who have had hostile motives, tried to create fear and horror among people and students, shut down schools, and created pessimism toward” the Iranian government.

    They would remain “under investigation until required assurances are achieved,” the statement said, adding that the number of poisoning cases at girls’ schools across the country had been decreasing “over the past several days.”

    The first suspected poisonings happened in November at a high school in the city of Qom which saw 18 schoolgirls hospitalized, according to Iranian state media.

    A mother of two daughters from Qom previously told CNN that both girls, who attended different schools, had suffered significant health issues after being poisoned.

    One girl experienced nausea, shortness of breath and numbness in her left leg and right hand while the other now had “difficulty walking,” she said.

    Growing alarm in Iran after report hundreds of schoolgirls were poisoned

    Another incident in the city took place in February when more than 100 students from 13 schools were hospitalized after what Iranian state news agencies described as “serial poisonings.”

    Both the United States and United Nations have called on Iranian authorities to fully investigate the suspected poisonings and hold those responsible to account.

    The White House on Monday said there must be a “credible, independent” investigation of poisonings among schoolgirls in Iran, suggesting it could be within the purview of the United Nations to look into the matter.

    Previously, the Biden administration had noted Iran itself was conducting an investigation. But questioned by CNN’s Phil Mattingly on Monday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the situation could fall within the mandate of the UN’s independent fact-finding mission on Iran.

    “We are closely following this deeply concerning situation that we’re seeing in Iran,” she said. “The continued poisoning of schoolgirls across Iran is unconscionable. There must be a credible, independent investigation (and) accountability for those responsible.”

    She said if the poisonings were related to recent protests, it was “well within” the UN fact-finding mission’s mandate.

    “The possibility that girls in Iran are being possibly poisoned for simply for trying to get an education is shameful, it’s unacceptable,” she said.

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  • Türkiye-Syria quakes: Migration chief hails ‘proud and brave’ citizens of Antakya

    Türkiye-Syria quakes: Migration chief hails ‘proud and brave’ citizens of Antakya

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    “In the ruins of historic Antakya city today, I met proud and brave people whose past has been eradicated, whose present is full of suffering and whose future is uncertain,” said António Vitorino, following a two-day visit to Türkiye, which included meetings with senior Government officials.

    “I am in awe of IOM colleagues and our many partners who began responding within hours of the earthquake, despite being affected themselves.

    ‘Now comes the long haul’

    “But now comes the long haul; standing in solidarity and action with Türkiye as it rebuilds and creates a new future for the millions whose lives have been torn apart,” added Mr. Vitorino.

    He said the sacrifices made by the numerous “humanitarian heroes” who dug so many out of the would never be forgotten, “and one of the reasons I am here is to pay tribute and condolences to them, and particularly to the families of the three IOM staff who perished.

    “Our teams overcame complex coordination and logistical issues, as well as personal tragedies, to get aid rapidly to affected communities in Türkiye and northwest Syria.”

    Three days after the disaster, IOM was one of the first UN agencies to restart cross border assistance, noted Mr Vitorino, visiting a logistics hub close to the border, which has been vital to the response as a transit point for thousands of tons of aid being brought into northwest Syria.

    150 trucks and counting

    So far in the response, IOM has dispatched over 150 aid trucks across the border.

    The UN reports that more than 500,000 in Syria have been made homeless by the earthquakes, and in Türkiye, more than 1.9 million are staying in temporary accommodation shelters, with 2.5 million children needing urgent humanitarian assistance.

    A total of 850,00 children from both countries are displaced, and the UN emergency response plans for both countries requires nearly $1.4 billion to cover the first three months of critical aid. More than five million across Türkiye need life-saving assistance.

    The 2023 response plan for Syria overall, will require $4.8 billion, the largest humanitarian appeal currently active.

    Mr. Vitorino met Türkiye’s Presidency of Migration Management at a Government-run temporary accommodation centre for those made homeless, including the local community, migrants and some Syrians under temporary protection.

    IOM 2023/Enver Mohammed

    Debris of quake-ruined buildings on one of the central streets of Antakya city, Hatay.

    ‘We’ve lost it all’

    Nawfal Melish, a Syrian national now living at the centre, told the IOM chief that has family used to live in Hatay and wanted for nothing.

    “But now we’ve lost it all. I worked in a shop, but that was destroyed by the earthquake, just like my house, but now we will start a new life. We are finding this displacement more difficult than the first one, when we had to leave Syria because of the war.”

    On Friday, in the capital Ankara, Mr Vitorino met the head of the Coordination Centre of the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management office, Yunus Sezer, a Government agency leading the response.

    “I was highly impressed with the Turkish Government’s emergency response in the face of an unimaginable calamity, he said, “and I am ever more proud of the strong relationship IOM has had with this country since our local office was first opened over 30 years ago.

    Support for moving forward

    “We continue to provide our operational capacity and experience to the Government to support them in moving forward on the road to recovery”.

    IOM’s appeal for $161 million to support response efforts in Türkiye and northwest Syria is currently less than 30 per cent funded.

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  • Arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agree to revive ties, reopen embassies in China-brokered deal

    Arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agree to revive ties, reopen embassies in China-brokered deal

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    Saudi Arabia and Iran on a world map

    Jeanursula | E+ | Getty Images

    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Long-time regional foes Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to resume diplomatic relations and reopen embassies in each other’s countries following China-led negotiations in Beijing, both governments announced via their respective state media agencies.

    “As a result of the talks, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to resume diplomatic relations and re-open embassies … within two months,” Iran’s news agency IRNA reported Friday.

    Saudi Arabia’s state Saudi Press Agency confirmed the announcement in its own statement.

    The Saudi statement profusely thanked Beijing for its leadership in the talks.

    “In response to the noble initiative of His Excellency President Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, of China’s support for developing good neighborly relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran… The delegations from the two countries held talks during the period 6-10 March 2023 in Beijing,” the SPA statement said.

    It emphasized the Chinese leader’s role in hosting and sponsoring talks between the Saudi Kingdom and Iran, a process that Riyadh described as “proceeding from their shared desire to resolve the disagreements between them through dialogue and diplomacy, and in light of their brotherly ties.”

    For China, this is a huge win.

    Anna Jacobs

    Senior Gulf analyst, International Crisis Group

    In addition to resuming diplomatic relations and reopening their embassies and missions in each other’s countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to affirm “the respect for the sovereignty of states and the non-interference in internal affairs of states.”

    They also agreed that the foreign ministers of both countries would meet to implement this and improve bilateral relations, and that previous cooperation accords — namely a “Security Cooperation Agreement” from 2001 and a “General Agreement for Cooperation” from 1998 covering the fields of trade, economy, sports, technology, science, culture, sports and youth — would be revived.

    “The three countries expressed their keenness to exert all efforts towards enhancing regional and international peace and security,” the Saudi statement said.

    The Saudi statement also expressed thanks to Riyadh’s neighbors Iraq and Oman, which it said had hosted “rounds of dialogue that took place between both sides during the years 2021-2022.”

    Oman’s foreign ministry welcomed the Friday development on Twitter, expressing hope that it will “contribute to strengthening the pillars of security and stability in the region and consolidating positive and constructive cooperation that benefits all peoples of the region and the world,” according to a Google translation.

    Chinese President, Xi Jinping (L) is welcomed by Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (R) at the Palace of Yamamah in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on December 8, 2022.

    Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

    Iran and Saudi Arabia have long accused each other of destabilizing the region and regarded one another as grave security threats, often on opposite sides of regional conflicts such as those in Yemen, Lebanon and Syria. Riyadh and Washington both accuse Tehran of being behind several attacks on Saudi ships, territory and energy infrastructure in the past few years.

    Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2016, after Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran in response to Saudi authorities executing 47 dissidents, including a leading Shia cleric.

    White House supports ‘effort to de-escalate tensions’

    The Saudis kept Washington informed of the deal, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told CNBC during a press call.

    “We support any effort to de-escalate tensions in the region. We think it’s in our interests and it’s something that we worked on through our own effective combination of deterrence and diplomacy,” Kirby said, adding that “it really does remain to be seen if Iran is going to meet their obligations.”

    The U.S. position is to see the war in Yemen end, he said, which is something that may be more likely to happen in light of Friday’s agreement.

    He meanwhile appeared to downplay China’s role in the deal. “This is not about China and I’m not going to characterize here whatever China’s role is,” Kirby said, adding that “it appears to us that this roadmap announced today was the result of multiple rounds of talks.”

    Positive news for the region, a win for Beijing

    The breakthrough is good news for the region, said Anna Jacobs, senior Gulf analyst at the International Crisis Group.

    “It’s hugely positive news,” she said, which signals that there has been enough dialogue “to start some serious confidence building measures and agree to this roadmap to restore full diplomatic relations. The news also suggests we are likely to some positive movement on the Yemen ceasefire.”

    The development “shows that Saudi-Iran dialogue has succeeded after many years, and it’s succeeded with support from regional powers like Iraq and Oman, but also global powers like China,” Jacobs told CNBC.

    The agreement also illustrates that China has stepped up its role in the region in new ways, particularly in mediation, Jacobs added. “For China, this is a huge win.”

    Remains of the missiles which were used to attack an Aramco oil facility, are displayed during a news conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia September 18, 2019.

    Hamad Mohammed | Reuters

    Michael Stephens, an associate fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute, agreed.

    “This is a serious moment in which the region itself and the two biggest powers in the region acknowledged the influence, the diplomatic presence, and the leverage of Beijing as their key arbiter in the region,” he said, noting that this is the first such instance for China as a mediator in the Middle East.

    “Now, that doesn’t mean that the U.S. is losing influence,” he said, pointing to the fact that the U.S. still has a far bigger military footprint than China in the region and its relationship with Israel is much stronger than Beijing’s.

    “That is all understood, and nobody is challenging the power of the U.S. and what it could do,” he said. “What they are challenging is the notion that the U.S. is leading. And that it’s the only game in town.”

    — CNBC’s Amanda Macias contributed to this report.

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  • Chaim Topol, Israeli actor known for Fiddler’s Tevye, dies

    Chaim Topol, Israeli actor known for Fiddler’s Tevye, dies

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    JERUSALEM (AP) — Chaim Topol, a leading Israeli actor who charmed generations of theatergoers and movie-watchers with his portrayal of Tevye, the long-suffering and charismatic milkman in “Fiddler on the Roof,” has died in Tel Aviv, Israeli leaders said Thursday. He was 87.

    The cause was not immediately released.

    Israeli leaders on Thursday tweeted their memories and condolences to Topol’s family.

    Israel’s ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, hailed Topol as “one of the most outstanding Israeli actors,” who “filled the movie screens with his presence and above all entered deep into our hearts.”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Topol’s “contribution to Israeli culture will continue to exist for generations.”

    Benny Gantz, Israel’s former minister of defense, praised Topol for helping Israelis connect to their roots.

    “We laughed and cried at the same time over the deepest wounds of Israeli society,” he wrote of Topol’s performance.

    Yair Lapid, head of Israel’s opposition, said Topol taught Israelis “love of culture and love of the land.”

    Topol’s charity, Jordan River Village, also announced his death, paying tribute to him as an “inspiration” whose “legacy will continue for generations to come.”

    A recipient of two Golden Globe awards and nominee for both an Academy Award and a Tony Award, Topol long has ranked among Israel’s most decorated actors. More recently in 2015, he was celebrated for his contributions to film and culture with the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement, his country’s most prestigious honor. Up until a few years ago, he remained involved in theater and said he still fielded requests to play Tevye.

    Topol got his start in acting in a theatrical troupe in the Israeli army in the 1950s, where he met his future wife Galia. His first major breakthrough was the lead role in the 1964 hit Israeli film Sallah Shabati, about the hardships of Middle Eastern immigrants to Israel. The film made history as the first Israeli film to earn an Academy Award nomination and also gave Topol his first Golden Globe Award.

    Two years later, he made his English-language film debut alongside Kirk Douglas in “Cast a Giant Shadow.” But the role of his life arrived in the long-running musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which he played the dairyman protagonist, Tevye, a Jewish father trying to maintain his family’s cultural traditions despite the turmoil gripping their Russian shtetl.

    With his rich voice, folkish witticisms and commanding stage presence, Topol’s Tevye, driving his horse-drawn buggy and delivering milk, butter and eggs to the rich, became a popular hero in Israel and around the world.

    After years of playing Tevye on stage in London and on Broadway, he scored the lead role in the 1971 Norman Jewison-directed film version, winning the Golden Globe award for lead actor and being nominated for a best actor Academy Award. He lost out to Gene Hackman in “The French Connection.”

    Topol played the part more than 3,500 times on stage, most recently in 2009. With the help of heavy makeup and costume work, he first portrayed the much older, burlier dairyman in his 30s and quite literally aged into the role.

    Topol faced tough competition securing the role in Jewison’s hit film — scores of talents have played Tevye in over a dozen languages since “Fiddler on the Roof” first appeared. Topol has said his personal experience as the descendant of Russian Jews helped him relate to Tevye and deepen his performance.

    In an interview with The Associated Press from his Tel Aviv home in 2015, on the occasion of accepting the Israel prize for lifetime achievement, Topol traced his meteoric rise from modest beginnings to worldwide fame.

    “I wasn’t brought up in Hollywood. I was brought up in a kibbutz,” he said. “Sometimes I am surprised when I come to China or when I come to Tokyo or when I come to France or when I come wherever and the clerk at the immigration says ’Topol, Topol, are you Topol?”

    Topol also starred in more than 30 other movies, including as the lead in “Galileo,” Dr. Hans Zarkov in “Flash Gordon” and James Bond’s foil-turned-ally Milos Columbo in “For Your Eyes Only” alongside Roger Moore.

    But he became synonymous with just one role — Tevye. Pouring his heart out about his impoverished Jewish community over the years, Topol made audiences laugh and cry from Broadway and West End stages.

    “How many people are known for one part? How many people in my profession are known worldwide?” he told the AP. “I’m not complaining.”

    Yet Topol said he sometimes needed to look outside of acting to find meaning in his life. He devoted much of his later years to charity as chairman of the board of Jordan River Village, a camp serving Middle Eastern children with life-threatening diseases.

    “I am interested in charities and find it more fulfilling than running from one (acting) part to another,” he said. ”When you are successful in a film and the money flows, yes, obviously, it is very nice. But to tell you that is the most important thing, I am not sure.”

    Topol is survived by his wife and three children.

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  • Blast kills Taliban governor in his office in Afghanistan | CNN

    Blast kills Taliban governor in his office in Afghanistan | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Taliban governor in northern Afghanistan has been killed by an explosion in his office, police officials have told CNN.

    Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the governor of Balkh province, died along with two others in the blast on Thursday, said the provincial police force’s spokesman Asif Waziri.

    The cause of the explosion remains unclear, but Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said the men had been killed “by the enemies of Islam.”

    However, he did not identify the suspects and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

    “An investigation into the incident is underway,” Mujahid said.

    The governor is one of the most senior officials to have been killed since the radical Islamist group retook control of the country in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US forces.

    Since then, the Islamic State militant group and its affiliates have claimed a series of deadly attacks in Afghanistan both on civilians and members of the Taliban.

    These have included an attack at a Sikh temple that killed at least two people, a string of incidents in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, and a suicide bomb blast at Kabul airport.

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  • Anti-Netanyahu protesters in Israel block major Tel Aviv roads in latest demonstration | CNN

    Anti-Netanyahu protesters in Israel block major Tel Aviv roads in latest demonstration | CNN

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    Tel Aviv, Israel
    CNN
     — 

    Protesters blocked the road to one of the main terminals of Israel’s central international airport on Thursday, intensifying a nationwide movement against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to weaken the country’s judicial system.

    A CNN team at Ben Gurion Airport saw people walking towards Terminal 3 with suitcases because of the blocked road, as scenes emerged of what is being called a “Day of Disruption.”

    Israeli television also showed a separate protest in the city of Tel Aviv that appeared to number in the thousands, with demonstrators waving Israeli flags.

    Protesters on foot blocked the Ayalon highway, one of Tel Aviv’s main roads, with some resisting police efforts to clear the highway, a CNN team at the scene saw.

    Demonstrators chanted “democracy,” “shame” and “where were you in Huwara?” at police, a reference to a West Bank Palestinian village that was the target of a violent riot by Jewish settlers nearly two weeks ago.

    The demonstration brought traffic to a standstill on the highway, CNN saw, before police on horseback succeeded in pushing protesters off the highway, clearing it. Demonstrators dispersed off the highway but remain in the area.

    Some protesters handed out roses to police, or placed them on police cars, TV pictures showed. As in previous protests, many of the demonstrators carried Israeli flags, while a few Pride flags were also in evidence.

    CNN saw protesters trying to block a truck mounted with a water cannon aimed at them.

    Israelis protesting against the government's controversial judicial reforms block the main road leading to Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday.

    Opponents of government plans to give Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, the power to overrule Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority have been protesting every Saturday night across Israel for the past nine weeks. The largest protests, in Tel Aviv, have regularly drawn more than 100,000 demonstrators, in a country with a population of just over nine million.

    The package of legislation would also give the government the authority to nominate judges, which currently rests with a committee composed of judges, legal experts and politicians. It would remove power and independence from government ministries’ legal advisers, and take away the power of the courts to invalidate government appointments.

    Supporters of the plan to overhaul the judiciary say the changes are necessary to rein in a Supreme Court that has become too powerful and is not democratically accountable.

    The protest at Ben Gurion Airport came hours before Netanyahu flew to Rome to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

    It also took place the day US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Israel for meetings with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Austin was originally due to come to Israel on Wednesday but delayed his arrival by a day at the request of Israeli officials concerned about the protests, the Pentagon said Wednesday. The location of his meeting was also changed because of the protests, Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryde said.

    US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin is greeted by Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant at Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday, as part of a broader Middle East trip.

    Austin will bring up Israeli violence in the West Bank during his short stay in Israel as part of a broader Middle East trip, a senior US defense official told reporters traveling with the secretary before his arrival in Israel.

    He is “going to share his deep and profound concern about activities that contribute to a cycle of violence on the West Bank,” the official said in a background briefing. “By spending so much time focusing on violence in the West Bank, it detracts from our ability to focus on what the strategic threat is right now, and that is Iran, dangerous nuclear advances and continuing regional and global aggression.”

    Undercover Israeli Border Police operatives killed three suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank Thursday morning, just hours before Austin landed, the Border Police announced. The Israeli security forces came under fire from a vehicle on an operation to arrest two suspected Palestinian Islamic Jihad military operatives, returned fire, and killed all three people in the vehicle, the police statement said.

    The widespread demonstrations across Israel on Thursday are unconnected to Austin’s visit.

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  • Marine injured in Kabul airport bombing recounts ‘catastrophic’ US withdrawal from Afghanistan at House hearing | CNN Politics

    Marine injured in Kabul airport bombing recounts ‘catastrophic’ US withdrawal from Afghanistan at House hearing | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    US Marine Corps Sergeant Tyler Vargas-Andrews can remember in specific detail the moment that a suicide bomber attacked Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate in August 2021 amid the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    “A flash and a massive wave of pressure. I’m thrown 4 feet onto the ground but instantly knew what had happened. I opened my eyes to Marines dead or unconscious lying around me. A crowd of hundreds immediately vanished in front of me. And my body was catastrophically wounded with 100 to 150 ball bearings now in it,” he recalled.

    Vargas-Andrews, 25, offered emotional and detailed testimony of the days leading up to the bombing, which took the lives of 13 US service members and more than 100 Afghans, as part of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the evacuation from Afghanistan.

    The Biden administration’s frenzied withdrawal after two decades of US involvement in the war has come under immense scrutiny by Republican lawmakers, including the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, who has vowed to investigate the matter.

    However, those accusations in Congress about who is responsible for the chaotic final weeks of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan have fallen largely along party lines, with Republican lawmakers pointing fingers at the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers casting blame on the Trump administration for the deal that set the US withdrawal into motion.

    In a statement to CNN Wednesday, White House spokesperson for oversight Ian Sams also pointed to the deal President Joe Biden “inherited” from Trump and said the last administration “failed to establish an evacuation plan and slowed down processing of special visas for our Afghan allies.”

    “Instead of returning the U.S. to active combat with the Taliban and putting even more of our troops’ lives at risk, President Biden made the tough decision to finally end the 20-year war in Afghanistan, bring our troops home, and safely evacuate tens upon tens of thousands of Americans and Afghan allies,” Sams said. He added that the withdrawal put “the U.S. in a stronger position to lead the world and address the challenges of the future, while continuing to welcome our Afghan allies and maintaining our ability to deal with terrorist threats in the region.”

    Wednesday’s hearing featured the testimonies of two service members who were on the ground in Afghanistan during those final weeks: Vargas-Andrews and US Army Specialist Aidan Gunderson. In addition, three people involved with groups who worked to evacuate Afghans – Francis Hoang from Allied Airlift 21, retired Lt. Col. David Scott Mann from Task Force Pineapple and Peter Lucier from Team America Relief – and immigration lawyer Camille Mackler, who worked to try to get the administration to begin relocating vulnerable Afghans well before the fall of Kabul, all served as witnesses.

    Vargas-Andrews described the withdrawal as a “catastrophe,” telling lawmakers that “there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence.” He painted a picture of days of chaos and violence toward Afghans who were trying to flee the Taliban, described the US State Department as “not prepared to be at” the Kabul airport, claimed that threat warnings were disregarded by higher command on the day of the attack.

    Vargas-Andrews described the horrific scenes he witnessed from his post at Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), telling lawmakers that “Afghans were brutalized and tortured by the Taliban.”

    “Some Afghans turned away from HKIA tried to kill themselves on the razor wire in front of us that we used as a deterrent,” he said. “Countless Afghans were murdered by the Taliban 155 yards in front of our position day and night.”

    “We communicated the atrocities to our chain of command and intel assets but nothing came of it,” he said.

    Vargas-Andrews said on the day of the August 26 suicide attack, he spotted a man in the crowd who fit the description of “a suicide bomber in the vicinity of and nearing Abbey Gate.”

    “Over the communication network we passed that there was a potential threat and an IED attack imminent. This was as serious as it could get,” he said, noting that he asked for permission to shoot, but “our battalion commander said, and I quote, ‘I don’t know,’ end quote.”

    “Myself and my team leader asked very harshly, ‘Well, who does? Because this is your responsibility, sir.’ He again replied he did not know but would find out. We received no update and never got our answer. Eventually the individual disappeared. To this day, we believe he was a suicide bomber,” he said.

    “Plain and simple, we were ignored. Our expertise was disregarded. No one was held accountable for our safety,” he said.

    Beyond the suicide attack, witnesses spoke about the mental health toll that the botched evacuation has had on US veterans of the war in Afghanistan.

    Mann, the retired lieutenant colonel, said he had a friend who took his own life, whose wife said “that the Afghan abandonment reactivated all the demons that he had managed to put behind him from hard time and Afghanistan together.”

    “And he just couldn’t find his way out of the darkness of that moral injury,” he said.

    They also spoke broadly about their work to try to aid the Afghans who worked alongside US troops during the war, the “majority” of whom were left behind in the evacuation, and the need to continue to work to help them.

    “I and thousands of others received frantic pleas for help from our Afghan allies whose lives were in peril,” said Hoang from Allied Airlift 21. “Thousands of us guided tired and scared Afghan families through crowds and Taliban checkpoints. The weight of this work was crushing. We left jobs, drained savings, reopened old wounds.”

    “We looked in horror as our screens filled with images of violence and desperation outside the gates of Kabul airport. We wept as we listened to messages left by children pleading for our help. Nine times out of 10 our efforts failed. But every success was a family saved, a promise kept,” he said.

    “It is our turn to summon the courage to fill our commitment to the Afghan allies still left behind,” Hoang said.

    Mackler, the immigration lawyer, told lawmakers that “what happened in August of 2021 was the product of decades long of inaction and systemic failures that we can no longer ignore.”

    “To ensure that the actions we heard today were not in vain, we must use this moment to create and implement better solutions,” she said, and called on Congress to take steps like passing the Afghan Adjustment Act.

    “After all, as we’ve been told, those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. We saw that in Afghanistan. We tried to learn the lessons from Vietnam and we were ignored, and we cannot allow a future generation to go through this as well,” Mackler said.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • US imposes visa sanction on Syrian military official over massacre that killed at least 41 unarmed civilians | CNN Politics

    US imposes visa sanction on Syrian military official over massacre that killed at least 41 unarmed civilians | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US State Department on Monday imposed a visa sanction on a Syrian military official whom it says killed at least 41 unarmed civilians in a neighborhood of Damascus in April 2013.

    Amjad Yousef, a military intelligence officer for the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and his immediate family will be blocked from entering the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

    Video evidence of the massacre in Tadamon, which Blinken described as being “carried out coldly and methodically,” publicly emerged in 2022 “after a long and comprehensive investigation by independent researchers.”

    “Today, we are taking action to promote accountability for this atrocity,” the top US diplomat said.

    The announcement of the visa restriction comes as a growing number of countries have renewed at least some level of contact directly with the Assad regime, particularly in the wake of last month’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

    “The footage of this massacre, coupled with the ongoing killing and abuse of countless Syrians, serves as a sobering reminder for why countries should not normalize relations with the Assad regime absent enduring progress towards a political resolution,” Blinken said.

    “The United States calls on the Assad regime to cease all violations and abuses of human rights, including but not limited to extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture,” he said.

    Blinken noted that March “marks the twelfth year of conflict in Syria during which the Assad regime has committed innumerable atrocities, some of which rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

    In an April 2022 article published in “New Lines Magazine,” the two researchers who helped expose the massacre said that the videos, which were “already shocking for their atrociousness, stand out in their brevity and callousness among the thousands of hours of footage that we have examined throughout our respective careers as researchers of mass violence and genocide in Syria and elsewhere.”

    “Particularly shocking about the Tadamon videos is the fact that the intelligence officers who committed the massacre were on duty and in uniform; they report to President Bashar al-Assad himself, and yet they chose to show their faces in the incriminating footage. At several points during the video, they looked straight into the camera seemingly relaxed and smiling. In documenting their own actions, they used HD video quality,” Annsar Shahhoud and Uğur Ümit Üngör wrote.

    Yousef, the official who was sanctioned by the State Department Tuesday, “is focused, stoic and precise, and he works efficiently toward completing the task within a matter of 25 minutes,” the researchers wrote.

    “After a few months, we confronted him with the massacre and let him know that we had seen the footage,” the researchers described.

    “First, he denied it was him in the video. Then, he said he was just arresting someone,” they wrote. “Finally, he settled on the justification that it was his job and expressed his content: ‘I am proud of my deeds.’”

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  • Turkey’s earthquake caused $34 billion in damage. It could cost Erdogan the election | CNN

    Turkey’s earthquake caused $34 billion in damage. It could cost Erdogan the election | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    The devastating earthquake that hit Turkey on February 6 killed at least 45,000 people, rendered millions homeless across almost a dozen cities and caused immediate damage estimated at $34 billion – or roughly 4% of the country’s annual economic output, according to the World Bank.

    But the indirect cost of the quake could be much higher, and recovery will be neither easy nor quick.

    The Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation estimates the total cost of the quake at $84.1 billion, the lion’s share of which would be for housing, at $70.8 billion, with lost national income pegged at $10.4 billion and lost working days at $2.91 billion.

    “I do not recall… any economic disaster at this level in the history of the Republic of Turkey,” said Arda Tunca, an Istanbul-based economist at PolitikYol.

    Turkey’s economy had been slowing even before the earthquake. Unorthodox monetary policies by the government caused soaring inflation, leading to further income inequality and a currency crisis that saw the lira lose 30% of its value against the dollar last year. Turkey’s economy grew 5.6% last year, Reuters reported, citing official data.

    Economists say those structural weaknesses in the economy will only get worse because of the quake and could determine the course of presidential and parliamentary elections expected in mid-May.

    Still, Tunca says that while the physical damage from the quake is colossal, the cost to the country’s GDP won’t be as pronounced when compared to the 1999 earthquake in Izmit, which hit the country’s industrial heartland and killed more than 17,000. According to the OECD, the areas impacted in that quake accounted for a third of the country’s GDP.

    The provinces most affected by the February 6 quake represent some 15% of Turkey’s population. According to the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation, they contribute 9% of the nation’s GDP, 11% of income tax and 14% of income from agriculture and fisheries.

    “Economic growth would slow down at first but I don’t expect a recessionary threat due to the earthquake,” said Selva Demiralp, a professor of economics at Koc University in Istanbul. “I don’t expect the impact on (economic) growth to be more than 1 to 2 (percentage) points.”

    There has been growing criticism of the country’s preparedness for the quake, whether through policies to mitigate the economic impact or prevent the scale of the damage seen in the disaster.

    How Turkey will rehabilitate its economy and provide for its newly homeless people is not yet known. But it could prove pivotal in determining President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political fate, analysts and economists say, as he seeks another term in office.

    The government’s 2023 budget, released before the earthquake, had planned for increased spending in an election year, foreseeing a deficit of 660 billion liras ($34.9 billion).

    The government has already announced some measures that analysts said were designed to shore up Erdogan’s popularity, including a near 55% increase in the minimum wage, early retirement and cheaper housing loans.

    Economists say that Turkey’s fiscal position is strong. Its budget deficit, when compared to its economic output, is smaller than that of other emerging markets like India, China and Brazil. That gives the government room to spend.

    “Turkey starts from a position of relative fiscal strength,” said Selva Bahar Baziki of Bloomberg Economics. “The necessary quake spending will likely result in the government breaching their budget targets. Given the high humanitarian toll, this would be the year to do it.”

    Quake-related public spending is estimated at 2.6% of GDP in the short run, she told CNN, but could eventually reach as high as 5.5%.

    Governments usually plug budget shortfalls by taking on more debt or raising taxes. Economists say both are likely options. But post-quake taxation is already a touchy topic in the country, and could prove risky in an election year.

    After the 1999 quake, Turkey introduced an “earthquake tax” that was initially introduced as a temporary measure to help cushion economic damage, but subsequently became a permanent tax.

    There has been concern in the country that the state may have squandered those tax revenues, with opposition leaders calling on the government to be more transparent about what happened to the money raised. When asked in 2020, Erdogan said the money “was not spent out of its purpose.” Since then, the government has said little more about how the money was spent.

    “The funds created for earthquake preparedness have been used for projects such as road constructions, infrastructure build-ups, etc. other than earthquake preparedness,” said Tunca. “In other words, no buffers or cushions have been set in place to limit the economic impacts of such disasters.”

    The Turkish presidency didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Analysts say it’s too early to tell precisely what impact the economic fallout will have on Erdogan’s prospects for re-election.

    The president’s approval rating was low even before the quake. In a December poll by Turkish research firm MetroPOLL, 52.1% of respondents didn’t approve of his handling of his job as president. A survey a month earlier found that a slim majority of voters would not vote for Erdogan if an election were held on that day.

    Two polls last week, however, showed the Turkish opposition had not picked up fresh support, Reuters reported, citing partly its failure to name a candidate and partly its lack of a tangible plan to rebuild areas devastated by the quake.

    The majority of the provinces worst affected by the quake voted for Erdogan and his ruling AK Party in the 2018 elections, but in some of those provinces, Erdogan and the AK Party won with a plurality of votes or a slim majority.

    Those provinces are some of the poorest in the country, the World Bank says.

    Research conducted by Demiralp as well as academics Evren Balta from Ozyegin University and Seda Demiralp from Isik University, found that while the ruling AK Party’s voters’ high partisanship is a strong hindrance to voter defection, economic and democratic failures could tip the balance.

    “Our data shows that respondents who report being able to make ends meet are more likely to vote for the incumbent AKP again,” the research concludes. “However, once worsening economic fundamentals push more people below the poverty line, the possibility of defection increases.”

    This could allow opposition parties to take votes from the incumbent rulers “despite identity-based cleavages if they target economically and democratically dissatisfied voters via clear messages.”

    For Tunca, the economic fallout from the quake poses a real risk for Erdogan’s prospects.

    “The magnitude of Turkey’s social earthquake is much greater than that of the tectonic one,” he said. “There is a tug of war between the government and the opposition, and it seems that the winner is going to be unknown until the very end of the elections.”

    Nadeen Ebrahim and Isil Sariyuce contributed to this report.

    This article has been corrected to say that the research, not the survey, was conducted by the academics.

    Sub-Saharan African countries repatriate citizens from Tunisia after ‘shocking’ statements from country’s president

    Sub-Saharan African countries including Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea and Gabon, are helping their citizens return from Tunisia following a controversial statement from Tunisian President Kais Saied, who has led a crackdown on illegal immigration into the North African country since last month.

    • Background: In a meeting with Tunisia’s National Security Council on February 21, Saied described illegal border crossing from sub-Saharan Africa into Tunisia as a “criminal enterprise hatched at the beginning of this century to change the demographic composition of Tunisia.” He said the immigration aims to turn Tunisia into “only an African country with no belonging to the Arab and Muslim worlds.” In a later speech on February 23, Saied maintained there is no racial discrimination in Tunisia and said that Africans residing in Tunisia legally are welcome. Authorities arrested 58 African migrants on Friday after they reportedly crossed the border illegally, state news agency TAP reported on Saturday.
    • Why it matters: Saied, whose seizure of power in 2021 was described as a coup by his foes, is facing challenges to his rule at home. Reuters on Sunday reported that opposition figures and rights groups have said that the president’s crackdown on migrants was meant to distract from Tunisia’s economic crisis.

    Iranian Supreme Leader says schoolgirls’ poisoning is an ‘unforgivable crime’

    Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday said that the poisoning of schoolgirls in recent months across Iran is an “unforgivable crime,” state-run news agency IRNA reported. Khamenei urged authorities to pursue the issue, saying that “if it is proven that the students were poisoned, the perpetrators of this crime should be severely punished.”

    • Background: Concern is growing in Iran after reports emerged that hundreds of schoolgirls had been poisoned across the country over the last few months. On Wednesday, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News reported that Shahriar Heydari, a member of parliament, said that “nearly 900 students” from across the country had been poisoned so far, citing an unnamed, “reliable source.”
    • Why it matters: The reports have led to a local and international outcry. While it is unclear whether the incidents were linked and if the students were targeted, some believe them to be deliberate attempts at shutting down girls’ schools, and even potentially linked to recent protests that spread under the slogan, “Women, Life, Freedom.”

    Iran to allow further IAEA access following discussions – IAEA chief

    Iran will allow more access and monitoring capabilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), agency Director General Rafael Grossi said at a press conference in Vienna on Saturday, following a trip to the Islamic Republic. The additional monitoring is set to start “very, very soon,” said Grossi, with an IAEA team arriving within a few days to begin reinstalling the equipment at several sites.

    • Background: Prior to the news conference, the IAEA released a joint statement with Iran’s atomic energy agency in which the two bodies agreed that interactions between them will be “carried out in the spirit of collaboration.” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said he hopes the IAEA will remain neutral and fair to Iran’s nuclear energy program and refrain from being affected “by certain powers which are pursuing their own specific goals,” reported Iranian state television Press TV on Saturday.
    • Why it matters: Last week, a restricted IAEA report seen by CNN said that uranium particles enriched to near bomb-grade levels have been found at an Iranian nuclear facility, as the US warned that Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb was accelerating. The president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami, rejected the recent IAEA report, which detected particles of uranium enriched to 83.7% at the Fordow nuclear facility in Iran, saying there has been ‘“no deviation” in Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities.

    A new sphinx statue has been discovered in Egypt – but this one is thought to be Roman.

    The smiling sculpture and the remains of a shrine were found during an excavation mission in Qena, a southern Egyptian city on the eastern banks of the River Nile.

    The shrine had been carved in limestone and consisted of a two-level platform, Mamdouh Eldamaty, a former minister of antiquities and professor of Egyptology at Ain Shams University said in a statement Monday from Egypt’s ministry of tourism and antiquities. A ladder and mudbrick basin for water storage were found inside.

    The basin, believed to date back to the Byzantine era, housed the smiling sphinx statue, carved from limestone.

    Eldamaty described the statue as bearing “royal facial features.” It had a “soft smile” with two dimples. It also wore a nemes on its head, the striped cloth headdress traditionally worn by pharaohs of ancient Egypt, with a cobra-shaped end or “uraeus.”

    A Roman stela with hieroglyphic and demotic writings from the Roman era was found below the sphinx.

    The professor said that the statue may represent the Roman Emperor Claudius, the fourth Roman emperor who ruled from the year 41 to 54, but noted that more studies are needed to verify the structure’s owner and history.

    The discovery was made in the eastern side of Dendera Temple in Qena, where excavations are still ongoing.

    Sphinxes are recurring creatures in the mythologies of ancient Egyptian, Persian and Greek cultures. Their likenesses are often found near tombs or religious buildings.

    It is not uncommon for new sphinx statues to be found in Egypt. But the country’s most famous sphinx, the Great Sphinx of Giza, dates back to around 2,500 BC and represents the ancient Egyptian Pharoah Khafre.

    By Nadeen Ebrahim

    Ziya Sutdelisi, 53, a former local administrator, receives a free haircut from a volunteer from Gaziantep, in the village of Buyuknacar, near Pazarcik, Kahramanmaras province on Sunday, one month after a massive earthquake struck southeast Turkey.

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  • Top US general visits Syria for first time as chairman of the joint chiefs, meets US forces | CNN Politics

    Top US general visits Syria for first time as chairman of the joint chiefs, meets US forces | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley visited Syria on Saturday, according to a statement from his office, marking his first visit to the country as the top US general.

    Milley met with US troops in northeast Syria, who are there as part of the campaign to defeat ISIS, and inspected force protection measures, his spokesman Col. Dave Butler said.

    The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned what it called Miley’s “illegal” visit to the US military base, saying it was a “flagrant violation of the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” according to state news agency SANA.

    Two weeks before Milley’s visit, US and coalition forces at Green Village in Syria came under rocket attack, according to US Central Command. Two rockets landed near the base, CENTCOM said. No US or coalition troops were injured, and there was no damage to the base.

    Just two days earlier, four US troops and one working dog were injured in a helicopter raid against a senior ISIS leader in northeast Syria. The raid killed Hamza al-Homsi, CENTCOM said. The troops were injured in an “explosion on target,” the command said, though it was unclear if it was a suicide vest, grenade or other explosive that injured the troops.

    The US maintains approximately 900 troops in Syria. While in the country, Milley also reviewed the ongoing repatriation efforts from the al-Hol refugee camp, which houses more than 60,000 displaced persons, including 25,000 children.

    The repatriation efforts have been a particular focus of Gen. Erik Kurilla, the commander of US Central Command, who has visited the camp three times since taking over on April 1, 2022. Kurilla’s most recent visit was in mid-November, when he warned that the children in the camp are “prime targets for ISIS radicalization.”

    In February, US forces conducted 15 partnered operations with local forces, including the Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces, as well as two US-only operations, according to CENTCOM. The operations led to the deaths of five ISIS operatives and the detention of 11 others, the command said.

    This story has been updated with additional reaction.

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  • Fact check: Trump delivers wildly dishonest speech at CPAC | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Trump delivers wildly dishonest speech at CPAC | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    As president, Donald Trump made some of his most thoroughly dishonest speeches at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

    As he embarks on another campaign for the presidency, Trump delivered another CPAC doozy Saturday night.

    Trump’s lengthy address to the right-wing gathering in Maryland was filled with wildly inaccurate claims about his own presidency, Joe Biden’s presidency, foreign affairs, crime, elections and other subjects.

    Here is a fact check of 23 of the false claims Trump made. (And that’s far from the total.)

    Crime in Manhattan

    While Trump criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has been investigating Trump’s company, he claimed that “killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.”

    Facts First: It isn’t even close to true that Manhattan is experiencing a number of killings that nobody has ever seen. The region classified by the New York Police Department as Manhattan North had 43 reported murders in 2022; that region had 379 reported murders in 1990 and 306 murders in 1993. The Manhattan South region had 35 reported murders in 2022 versus 124 reported murders in 1990 and 86 murders in 1993. New York City as a whole is also nowhere near record homicide levels; the city had 438 reported murders in 2022 versus 2,262 in 1990 and 1,927 in 1993.

    Manhattan North had just eight reported murders this year through February 19, while Manhattan South had one. The city as a whole had 49 reported murders.

    The National Guard and Minnesota

    Talking about rioting amid racial justice protests after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Trump claimed he had been ready to send in the National Guard in Seattle, then added, “We saved Minneapolis. The thing is, we’re not supposed to do that. Because it’s up to the governor, the Democrat governor. They never want any help. They don’t mind – it’s almost like they don’t mind to have their cities and states destroyed. There’s something wrong with these people.”

    Facts First: This is a reversal of reality. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, not Trump, was the one who deployed the Minnesota National Guard during the 2020 unrest; Walz first activated the Guard more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself. Walz’s office told CNN in 2020 that the governor activated the Guard in response to requests from officials in Minneapolis and St. Paul – cities also run by Democrats.

    Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that he was the one who sent the Guard to Minneapolis. You can read a longer fact check, from 2020, here.

    Trump’s executive order on monuments

    Trump boasted that he had taken effective action as president to stop the destruction of statues and memorials. He claimed: “I passed and signed an executive order. Anybody that does that gets 10 years in jail, with no negotiation – it’s not ’10’ but it turns into three months.” He added: “But we passed it. It was a very old law, and we found it – one of my very good legal people along with [adviser] Stephen Miller, they found it. They said, ‘Sir, I don’t know if you want to try and bring this back.’ I said. ‘I do.’”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. He did not create a mandatory 10-year sentence for people who damage monuments. In fact, his 2020 executive order did not mandate any increase in sentences.

    Rather, the executive order simply directed the attorney general to “prioritize” investigations and prosecutions of monument-destruction cases and declared that it is federal policy to prosecute such cases to the fullest extent permitted under existing law, including an existing law that allowed a sentence of up to 10 years in prison for willfully damaging federal property. The executive order did nothing to force judges to impose a 10-year sentence.

    Vandalism in Portland

    Trump claimed, “How’s Portland doing? They don’t even have storefronts anymore. Everything’s two-by-four’s because they get burned down every week.”

    Facts First: This is a major exaggeration. Portland obviously still has hundreds of active storefronts, though it has struggled with downtown commercial vacancies for various reasons, and some businesses are sometimes vandalized by protesters. Trump has for years exaggerated the extent of property damage from protest vandalism in Portland.

    Russian expansionism

    Boasting of his foreign policy record, Trump claimed, “I was also the only president where Russia didn’t take over a country during my term.”

    Facts First: While it’s true that Russia didn’t take over a country during Trump’s term, it’s not true that he was the only US president under whom Russia didn’t take over a country. “Totally false,” Michael Khodarkovsky, a Loyola University Chicago history professor who is an expert on Russian imperialism, said in an email. “If by Russia he means the current Russian Federation that existed since 1991, then the best example is Clinton, 1992-98. During this time Russia fought a war in Chechnya, but Chechnya was not a country but one of Russia’s regions.”

    Khodarkovsky added, “If by Russia he means the USSR, as people often do, then from 1945, when the USSR occupied much of Eastern Europe until 1979, when USSR invaded Afghanistan, Moscow did not take over any new country. It only sent forces into countries it had taken over in 1945 (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968).”

    NATO funding

    Trump said while talking about NATO funding: “And I told delinquent foreign nations – they were delinquent, they weren’t paying their bills – that if they wanted our protection, they had to pay up, and they had to pay up now.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that NATO countries weren’t paying “bills” until Trump came along or that they were “delinquent” in the sense of failing to pay bills – as numerous fact-checkers pointed out when Trump repeatedly used such language during his presidency. NATO members haven’t been failing to pay their share of the organization’s common budget to run the organization. And while it’s true that most NATO countries were not (and still are not) meeting NATO’s target of each country spending a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defense, that 2% figure is what NATO calls a “guideline”; it is not some sort of binding contract, and it does not create liabilities. An official NATO recommitment to the 2% guideline in 2014 merely said that members not currently at that level would “aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade.”

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg did credit Trump for securing increases in European NATO members’ defense spending, but it’s worth noting that those countries’ spending had also increased in the last two years of the Obama administration following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the recommitment that year to the 2% guideline. NATO notes on its website that 2022 was “the eighth consecutive year of rising defence spending across European Allies and Canada.”

    NATO’s existence

    Boasting of how he had secured additional funding for NATO from countries, Trump claimed, “Actually, NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense.

    There was never any indication that NATO, created in 1949, would have ceased to exist in the early 2020s without additional funding from some members. The alliance was stable even with many members not meeting the alliance’s guideline of having members spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

    We don’t often fact-check claims about what might have happened in an alternative scenario, but this Trump claim has no basis in reality. “The quote doesn’t make sense, obviously,” said Erwan Lagadec, research professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and an expert on NATO.

    Lagadec noted that NATO has had no trouble getting allies to cover the roughly $3 billion in annual “direct” funding for the organization, which is “peanuts” to this group of countries. And he said that the only NATO member that had given “any sign” in recent years that it was thinking about leaving the alliance “was … the US, under Trump.” Lagadec added that the US leaving the alliance is one scenario that could realistically kill it, but that clearly wasn’t what Trump was talking about in his remarks on spending levels.

    James Goldgeier, an American University professor of international relations and Brookings Institution visiting fellow, said in an email: “NATO was founded in 1949, so it seems very clear that Donald Trump had nothing to do with its existence. In fact, the worry was that he would pull the US out of NATO, as his national security adviser warned he would do if he had been reelected.”

    The cost of NATO’s headquarters

    Trump mocked NATO’s headquarters, saying, “They spent – an office building that cost $3 billion. It’s like a skyscraper in Manhattan laid on its side. It’s one of the longest buildings I’ve ever seen. And I said, ‘You should have – instead of spending $3 billion, you should have spent $500 million building the greatest bunker you’ve ever seen. Because Russia didn’t – wouldn’t even need an airplane attack. One tank one shot through that beautiful glass building and it’s gone.’”

    Facts First: NATO did spend a lot of money on its headquarters in Belgium, but Trump’s “$3 billion” figure is a major exaggeration. When Trump used the same inaccurate figure in early 2020, NATO told CNN that the headquarters was actually constructed for a sum under the approved budget of about $1.18 billion euro, which is about $1.3 billion at exchange rates as of Sunday morning.

    The Pulitzer Prize

    Trump made his usual argument that The Washington Post and The New York Times should not have won a prestigious journalism award, a 2018 Pulitzer Prize, for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election and its connections to Trump’s team. He then said, “And they were exactly wrong. And now they’ve even admitted that it was a hoax. It was a total hoax, and they got the prize.”

    Facts First: The Times and Post have not made any sort of “hoax” admission. “The claim is completely false,” Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said in an email on Sunday.

    Stadtlander continued: “When our Pulitzer Prize shared with The Washington Post was challenged by the former President, the award was upheld by the Pulitzer Prize Board after an independent review. The board stated that ‘no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.’ The Times’s reporting was also substantiated by the Mueller investigation and Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the matter.”

    The Post referred CNN to that same July statement from the Pulitzer Prize Board.

    Awareness of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline

    Trump claimed of his opposition to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany: “Nord Stream 2 – Nobody ever heard of it … right? Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along. I started talking about Nord Stream 2. I had to go call it ‘the pipeline’ because nobody knew what I was talking about.”

    Facts First: This is standard Trump hyperbole; it’s just not true that “nobody” had heard of Nord Stream 2 before he began discussing it. Nord Stream 2 was a regular subject of media, government and diplomatic discussion before Trump took office. In fact, Biden publicly criticized it as vice president in 2016. Trump may well have generated increased US awareness to the controversial project, but “nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along” isn’t true.

    Trump and Nord Stream 2

    Trump claimed, “I got along very well with Putin even though I’m the one that ended his pipeline. Remember they said, ‘Trump is giving a lot to Russia.’ Really? Putin actually said to me, ‘If you’re my friend, I’d hate like hell to see you as my enemy.’ Because I ended the pipeline, right? Do you remember? Nord Stream 2.” He continued, “I ended it. It was dead.”

    Facts First: Trump did not kill Nord Stream 2. While he did approve sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already around an estimated 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.

    The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine early last year. The pipeline was damaged later in the year in what has been described as an act of sabotage.

    The Obama administration and Ukraine

    Trump claimed that while he provided lethal assistance to Ukraine, the Obama administration “didn’t want to get involved” and merely “supplied the bedsheets.” He said, “Do you remember? They supplied the bedsheets. And maybe even some pillows from [pillow businessman] Mike [Lindell], who’s sitting right over here. … But they supplied the bedsheets.”

    Facts First: This is inaccurate. While it’s true that the Obama administration declined to provide weapons to Ukraine, it provided more than $600 million in security assistance to Ukraine between 2014 and 2016 that involved far more than bedsheets. The aid included counter-artillery and counter-mortar radars, armored Humvees, tactical drones, night vision devices and medical supplies.

    Biden and a Ukrainian prosecutor

    Trump claimed that Biden, as vice president, held back a billion dollars from Ukraine until the country fired a prosecutor who was “after Hunter” and a company that was paying him. Trump was referring to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, who sat on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

    Facts First: This is baseless. There has never been any evidence that Hunter Biden was under investigation by the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who had been widely faulted by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and European countries for failing to investigate corruption. A former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor and a top anti-corruption activist have both said the Burisma-related investigation was dormant at the time Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin.

    Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, told The Washington Post in 2019: “Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t want to investigate Burisma. And Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation.” In addition, Shokin’s successor as prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg in 2019: “Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws – at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing.”

    Biden, as vice president, was carrying out the policy of the US and its allies, not pursuing his own agenda, in threatening to withhold a billion-dollar US loan guarantee if the Ukrainian government did not sack Shokin. CNN fact-checked Trump’s claims on this subject at length in 2019.

    Trump and job creation

    Promising to save Americans’ jobs if he is elected again, Trump claimed, “We had the greatest job history of any president ever.”

    Facts First: This is false. The US lost about 2.7 million jobs during Trump’s presidency, the worst overall jobs record for any president. The net loss was largely because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but even Trump’s pre-pandemic jobs record – about 6.7 million jobs added – was far from the greatest of any president ever. The economy added more than 11.5 million jobs in the first term of Democratic President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

    Tariffs on China

    Trump repeated a trade claim he made frequently during his presidency. Speaking of China, he said he “charged them” with tariffs that had the effect of “bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our Treasury from China. Thank you very much, China.” He claimed that he did this even though “no other president had gotten even 10 cents – not one president got anything from them.”

    Facts First: As we have written repeatedly, it’s not true that no president before Trump had generated any revenue through tariffs on goods from China. In reality, the US has had tariffs on China for more than two centuries, and FactCheck.org reported in 2019 that the US generated an “average of $12.3 billion in custom duties a year from 2007 to 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb.” Also, American importers, not Chinese exporters, make the actual tariff payments – and study after study during Trump’s presidency found that Americans were bearing most of the cost of the tariffs.

    The trade deficit with China

    Trump went on to repeat a false claim he made more than 100 times as president – that the US used to have a trade deficit with China of more than $500 billion. He claimed it was “five-, six-, seven-hundred billion dollars a year.”

    Facts First: The US has never had a $500 billion, $600 billion or $700 billion trade deficit with China even if you only count trade in goods and ignore the services trade in which the US runs a surplus with China. The pre-Trump record for a goods deficit with China was about $367 billion in 2015. The goods deficit hit a new record of about $418 billion under Trump in 2018 before falling back under $400 billion in subsequent years.

    Trump and the 2020 election

    Trump said people claim they want to run against him even though, he claimed, he won the 2020 election. He said, “I won the second election, OK, won it by a lot. You know, when they say, when they say Biden won, the smart people know that didn’t [happen].”

    Facts First: This is Trump’s regular lie. He lost the 2020 election to Biden fair and square, 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. Biden earned more than 7 million more votes than Trump did.

    Democrats and elections

    Trump said Democrats are only good at “disinformation” and “cheating on elections.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. There is just no basis for a broad claim that Democrats are election cheaters. Election fraud and voter fraud are exceedingly rare in US elections, though such crimes are occasionally committed by officials and supporters of both parties. (We’ll ignore Trump’s subjective claim about “disinformation.”)

    The liberation of the ISIS caliphate

    Trump repeated his familiar story about how he had supposedly liberated the “caliphate” of terror group ISIS in “three weeks.” This time, he said, “In fact, with the ISIS caliphate, a certain general said it could only be done in three years, ‘and probably it can’t be done at all, sir.’ And I did it in three weeks. I went over to Iraq, met a great general. ‘Sir, I can do it in three weeks.’ You’ve heard that story. ‘I can do it in three weeks, sir.’ ‘How are you going to do that?’ They explained it. I did it in three weeks. I was told it couldn’t be done at all, that it would take at least three years. Did it in three weeks. Knocked out 100% of the ISIS caliphate.”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim of eliminating the ISIS caliphate in “three weeks” isn’t true; the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency, in 2019. Even if Trump was starting the clock at the time of his visit to Iraq, in late December 2018, the liberation was proclaimed more than two and a half months later. In addition, Trump gave himself far too much credit for the defeat of the caliphate, as he has in the past, when he said “I did it”: Kurdish forces did much of the ground fighting, and there was major progress against the caliphate under President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016.

    IHS Markit, an information company that studied the changing size of the caliphate, reported two days before Trump’s 2017 inauguration that the caliphate shrunk by 23% in 2016 after shrinking by 14% in 2015. “The Islamic State suffered unprecedented territorial losses in 2016, including key areas vital for the group’s governance project,” an analyst there said in a statement at the time.

    Military equipment left in Afghanistan

    Trump claimed, as he has before, that the US left behind $85 billion worth of military equipment when it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. He said of the leader of the Taliban: “Now he’s got $85 billion worth of our equipment that I bought – $85 billion.” He added later: “The thing that nobody ever talks about, we lost 13 [soldiers], we lost $85 billion worth of the greatest military equipment in the world.”

    Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan government forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of about $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.

    As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress has appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment.

    The Afghanistan withdrawal and the F-16

    Trump claimed that the Taliban acquired F-16 fighter planes because of the US withdrawal, saying: “They feared the F-16s. And now they own them. Think of it.”

    Facts First: This is false. F-16s were not among the equipment abandoned upon the US withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan armed forces, since the Afghan armed forces did not fly F-16s.

    The border wall

    Trump claimed that he had kept his promise to complete a wall on the border with Mexico: “As you know, I built hundreds of miles of wall and completed that task as promised. And then I began to add even more in areas that seemed to be allowing a lot of people to come in.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that Trump “completed” the border wall. According to an official “Border Wall Status” report written by US Customs and Border Protection two days after Trump left office, about 458 miles of wall had been completed under Trump – but about 280 more miles that had been identified for wall construction had not been completed.

    The report, provided to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, said that, of those 280 miles left to go, about 74 miles were “in the pre-construction phase and have not yet been awarded, in locations where no barriers currently exist,” and that 206 miles were “currently under contract, in place of dilapidated and outdated designs and in locations where no barriers previously existed.”

    Latin America and deportations

    Trump told his familiar story about how, until he was president, the US was unable to deport MS-13 gang members to other countries, “especially” Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras because those countries “didn’t want them.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that, as a rule, Guatemala and Honduras wouldn’t take back migrants being deported from the US during Obama’s administration, though there were some individual exceptions.

    In 2016, just prior to Trump’s presidency, neither Guatemala nor Honduras was on the list of countries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considered “recalcitrant,” or uncooperative, in accepting the return of their nationals.

    For the 2016 fiscal year, Obama’s last full fiscal year in office, ICE reported that Guatemala and Honduras ranked second and third, behind only Mexico, in terms of the country of citizenship of people being removed from the US. You can read a longer fact check, from 2019, here.

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  • Crisis over suspected Iran schoolgirl poisonings escalates

    Crisis over suspected Iran schoolgirl poisonings escalates

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A crisis over suspected poisonings targeting Iranian schoolgirls escalated Sunday as authorities acknowledged over 50 schools were struck in a wave of possible cases. The poisonings have spread further fear among parents as Iran has faced months of unrest.

    It remains unclear who or what is responsible since the alleged poisonings began in November in the Shiite holy city of Qom. Reports now suggest schools across 21 of Iran’s 30 provinces have seen suspected cases, with girls’ schools the site of nearly all the incidents.

    The attacks have raised fears that other girls could be poisoned, apparently just for going to school. Education for girls has never been challenged in the more than 40 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran has been calling on the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan to allow girls and women return to school and universities.

    Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi on Saturday said, without elaborating, that investigators recovered “suspicious samples” in the course of their investigations into the incidents, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. He called for calm among the public, while also accusing the “enemy’s media terrorism” of inciting more panic over the alleged poisonings.

    However, it wasn’t until the poisonings received international media attention that hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi announced an investigation into the incidents on Wednesday.

    On Sunday, Raisi told the Cabinet, following a report read by Intelligence Minister Ismail Khatib, that the root of the poisonings must be uncovered and confronted. He described the alleged attacks as a “crime against humanity for creating anxiety among student and parents.”

    Vahidi said at least 52 schools had been affected by suspected poisonings. Iranian media reports have put the number of schools at over 60. At least one boy’s school reportedly has been affected.

    Videos of upset parents and schoolgirls in emergency rooms with IVs in their arms have flooded social media. Making sense of the crisis remains challenging, given that nearly 100 journalists have been detained by Iran since the start of protests in September over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. She had been detained by the country’s morality police and later died.

    The security force crackdown on those protests has seen at least 530 people killed and 19,700 others detained, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran.

    The children affected in the poisonings reportedly complained of headaches, heart palpitations, feeling lethargic or otherwise unable to move. Some described smelling tangerines, chlorine or cleaning agents.

    Reports suggest at least 400 schoolchildren have fallen ill since November. Vahidi, the interior minister, said in his statement that two girls remain in hospital because of underlying chronic conditions.

    As more attacks were reported Sunday, videos were posted on social media showing children complaining about pain in the legs, abdomen and dizziness. State media have mainly referred to these as “hysteric reactions.”

    Since the outbreak, no one was reported in critical condition and there have been no reports of fatalities.

    Attacks on women have happened in the past in Iran, most recently with a wave of acid attacks in 2014 around the city of Isfahan, at the time believed to have been carried out by hard-liners targeting women for how they dressed.

    Speculation in Iran’s tightly controlled state media has focused on the possibility of exile groups or foreign powers being behind the poisonings. That was also repeatedly alleged during the recent protests without evidence. In recent days, Germany’s foreign minister, a White House official and others have called on Iran to do more to protect schoolgirls — a concern Iran’s Foreign Ministry has dismissed as “crocodile tears.”

    However, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted that Iran has “continued to tolerate attacks against women and girls for months” amid the recent protests.

    “These poisonings are occurring in an environment where Iranian officials have impunity for the harassment, assault, rape, torture and execution of women peacefully asserting their freedom of religion or belief,” Sharon Kleinbaum of the commission said in a statement.

    Suspicion in Iran has fallen on possible hard-liners for carrying out the suspected poisonings. Iranian journalists, including Jamileh Kadivar, a prominent former reformist lawmaker at Tehran’s Ettelaat newspaper, have cited a supposed communique from a group calling itself Fidayeen Velayat that purportedly said that girls’ education “is considered forbidden” and threatened to “spread the poisoning of girls throughout Iran” if girls’ schools remain open.

    Iranian officials have not acknowledged any group called Fidayeen Velayat, which roughly translates to English as “Devotees of the Guardianship.” However, Kadivar’s mention of the threat in print comes as she remains influential within Iranian politics and has ties to its theocratic ruling class. The head of the Ettelaat newspaper also is appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    Kadivar wrote Saturday that another possibility is “mass hysteria.” There have been previous cases of this over the last decades, most recently in Afghanistan from 2009 through 2012. Then, the World Health Organization wrote about so-called “mass psychogenic illnesses” affecting hundreds of girls in schools across the country.

    “Reports of stench smells preceding the appearance of symptoms have given credit to the theory of mass poisoning,” WHO wrote at the time. “However, investigations into the causes of these outbreaks have yielded no such evidence so far.”

    Iran has not acknowledged asking the world health body for assistance in its investigation. WHO did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

    However, Kadivar also noted that hard-liners in Iranian governments in the past carried out so-called “chain murders” of activists and others in the 1990s. She also referenced the killings by Islamic vigilantes in 2002 in the city of Kerman, when one victim was stoned to death and others were tied up and thrown into a swimming pool, where they drowned. She described those vigilantes as being members of the Basij, an all-volunteer force in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

    “The common denominator of all of them is their extreme thinking, intellectual stagnation and rigid religious view that allowed them to have committed such violent actions,” Kadivar wrote.

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  • Is a new nuclear deal with Iran possible?

    Is a new nuclear deal with Iran possible?

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    From: Inside Story

    The UN’s nuclear agency says Iran has pledged to cooperate with the monitoring of its sites.

    The United Nations’ nuclear agency says Iran has pledged to cooperate with the monitoring of its sites.

    It comes after a visit to Tehran by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi.

    His trip followed reports that the IAEA had found particles of uranium that had been enriched to near-weapons grade level at Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility.

    Tehran denies its intention to develop a nuclear weapon.

    But it has ramped up its enrichment programme since then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.

    So how will Western powers react? Have sanctions against Iran worked?

    Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom

    Guests:

    Fouad Izadi – Associate professor at the Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran

    Sahil Shah – Nuclear policy specialist and senior Iran policy adviser at the European Leadership Network

    Alex Vatanka – Director and senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and founding director of its Iran programme

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  • Wave of suspected poison attacks on schoolgirls sparks protests in Iran | CNN

    Wave of suspected poison attacks on schoolgirls sparks protests in Iran | CNN

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    Worried parents protested in Iran’s capital Tehran and other cities on Saturday over a wave of suspected poison attacks that have affected schoolgirls in dozens of schools, according to Iranian news agencies and social media videos.

    The so-far unexplained illnesses have affected hundreds of schoolgirls in recent months. Iranian officials believe the girls may have been poisoned and have blamed Tehran’s enemies.

    The country’s health minister has said the girls have suffered “mild poison” attacks and some politicians have suggested the girls could have been targeted by hardline Islamist groups opposed to girls’ education.

    Iran’s interior minister said on Saturday investigators had found “suspicious samples” that were being studied.

    “In field studies, suspicious samples have been found, which are being investigated… to identify the causes of the students’ illness, and the results will be published as soon as possible,” the minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, said in a statement carried by the official news agency IRNA.

    Sickness affected more than 30 schools in at least 10 of Iran’s 31 provinces on Saturday. Videos posted on social media showed parents gathered at schools to take their children home and some students being taken to hospitals by ambulance or buses.

    A woman from the city of Qom previously told CNN that both her daughters, who attended different schools, had been poisoned. One girl suffered significant health issues after being poisoned: experiencing nausea, shortness of breath and numbness in her left leg and right hand as well as difficulty walking.

    A gathering of parents outside an Education Ministry building in western Tehran on Saturday to protest over the illnesses turned into an anti-government demonstration, according to a video verified by Reuters.

    “Basij, Guards, you are our Daesh,” protesters chanted, likening the Revolutionary Guards and other security forces to the Islamic State group.

    Similar protests were held in two other areas in Tehran and other cities including Isfahan and Rasht, according to unverified videos.

    The outbreak of schoolgirl sickness comes at a critical time for Iran’s clerical rulers, who have faced months of anti-government protests sparked by the death of a young Iranian woman in the custody of the morality police who enforce strict dress codes.

    Social media posts in recent days have shown photos and videos of girls who have fallen ill, feeling nauseaous or suffering heart palpitations. Others complained of headaches. Reuters could not verify the posts.

    The United Nations human rights office in Geneva called on Friday for a transparent investigation into the suspected attacks and countries including Germany and the United States have voiced concern.

    Experts have spoken about the difficulties in investigating the situation in Iran and told CNN that the incidents were “remarkably similar” to dozens of incidents at schools in Afghanistan since 2009. “In a few of these incidents, pesticides were strongly suspected but most of the illnesses remain unexplained,” said London based defense specialist Dan Kaszeta from the Royal United Services Institute.

    Iran rejected what it views as foreign meddling and “hasty reactions” and said on Friday it was investigating the causes of the incidents.

    “It is one of the immediate priorities of Iran’s government to pursue this issue as quickly as possible and provide documented information to resolve the families’ concerns and to hold accountable the perpetrators and the causes,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani told state media.

    Schoolgirls were active in the anti-government protests that began in September. They have removed their mandatory headscarves in classrooms, torn up pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and called for his death.

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  • Israelis rally again to protest government’s judicial overhaul

    Israelis rally again to protest government’s judicial overhaul

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    Tens of thousands rally for the ninth straight week against government plan to overhaul court system.

    Protesters have taken to the streets of Israeli cities for the ninth straight week to reject a government plan to overhaul the country’s court system.

    Tens of thousands took part in Saturday night’s demonstrations in Tel Aviv and other locations which continued peacefully, unlike protests earlier this week that descended into violent clashes with police.

    “I came to demonstrate against the regime revolution, which the Israeli government forced upon us,” 53-year-old history teacher Ronen Cohen told the Reuters news agency. “I hope that this huge demonstration will affect and prove that we are not going to give up.”

    The marches have attracted huge crowds on a weekly basis since early January, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government took aim at the Supreme Court.

    The protesters oppose legislation that Netanyahu and his right-wing and religious allies hope to pass that would limit the Supreme Court’s powers to rule against the legislature and the executive, while giving legislators decisive powers in appointing judges.

    Judicial reform is a cornerstone of Netanyahu’s latest administration, an alliance with ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties which took office in late December.

    Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, presented the overhaul as key to restoring the balance between the branches of government in a system he has argued gave judges too much power over elected officials.

    Thousands took to the streets in Tel Aviv [Tsafrir Abayov/AP Photo]

    The legislation would give more weight to the government in the committee that selects judges, and would deny the Supreme Court the right to strike down any amendments to so-called “Basic Laws”, Israel’s quasi-constitution.

    These provisions have already received first-reading endorsements from legislators.

    Another element of the reforms would give the 120-member parliament power to overrule Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority of 61 votes.

    Analysts have said such a derogation clause could allow lawmakers to uphold any annulment of the corruption charges Netanyahu is being tried on, should parliament vote to absolve him and the Supreme Court then ruled against it.

    Netanyahu has denied the charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and rejected any link between the reforms and his own court case.

    The intensity of the protests increased this week when Israeli police fired stun grenades and scuffles broke out in Tel Aviv on Wednesday during a nationwide “day of disruption”.

    “There’s a great danger that Israel will turn into a dictatorship,” 68-year-old high school teacher Ophir Kubitsky said on Saturday. “We came here to demonstrate over and over again until we win.”

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  • Holy oil to anoint King Charles III on his coronation, has been consecrated in Jerusalem | CNN

    Holy oil to anoint King Charles III on his coronation, has been consecrated in Jerusalem | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    The sacred oil that will be used to anoint King Charles III at his coronation May 6, has been consecrated at a Christian holy site in Jerusalem, Buckingham Palace has announced.

    The “chrism oil” was created using olives harvested from two groves on the Mount of Olives, a mountain ridge to the east of Jerusalem’s Old City, which holds religious importance to Christians.

    Olives from the Monastery of Mary Magdalene and the Monastery of the Ascension were pressed just outside Bethlehem, where Christians believe Jesus was born, according to a statement.

    The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he wanted to see a new oil produced from the olives from the Mount of Olives since planning for the coronation began.

    “This demonstrates the deep historic link between the Coronation, the Bible and the Holy Land. From ancient kings through to the present day, monarchs have been anointed with oil from this sacred place. As we prepare to anoint The King and The Queen Consort, I pray that they would be guided and strengthened by the Holy Spirit,” he said in the statement.

    On coronation day, the Archbishop of Canterbury will perform the anointing service, a duty which has been undertaken by the post since 1066.

    A ceremony at The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, saw the consecration of the oil on Friday. It was held by the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilos III, and the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, The Most Reverend Hosam Naoum. Christians believe Jesus was crucified where the Holy Sepulchre now stands.

    The silver urn containing the chrism oil ready for the coronation.

    Charles’ coronation oil is based on the centuries-old formula used in his mother, Queen Elizabeth II’s anointment in 1953, but with some important differences.

    The late Queen’s coronation oil included a concoction of orange, rose, cinnamon, musk and ambergris oils. Ambergris is a substance that originates from the intestine of the sperm whale.

    The King’s sacred mix is made of oils of sesame, rose, jasmine, cinnamon, neroli, benzoin, amber and orange blossom – without any ingredients from animals.

    It will also be used to anoint Camilla, the Queen Consort, the statement added.

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